1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to representing media and more specifically to storing a tree of related media assets.
2. Introduction
With recent advances in technology, many individuals now possess the necessary tools for creating, editing, and sharing media. Indeed sites such as YouTube.com are based on the concept of users uploading home made videos as well as editing and/or commenting on others' videos. Further, digital media distribution on DVDs and online have allowed for many users to copy and paste sections from others' media, including commercial media, in their own creations. Users also create parodies of existing media which often trigger others to view the parodied media. Due to these and other factors, media is increasingly cross-pollinated. Users create tens of thousands of directly and indirectly derivative works every day. On top of these derivative works, professional studios often revise their work to make different versions or editions, such as a standard full-screen DVD, a widescreen extended edition DVD, a widescreen extended edition with director commentary HD-DVD, etc. These different media versions and derivative versions are currently very disconnected and not uniformly represented, especially when considering descriptors such as user comments, subtitles, alternate audio tracks, formats, metadata, etc. Accordingly, what is needed in the art is an improved way to represent and store related media assets and supplementary descriptive information.